


A Crayon Drawing of a Family

by glasscamellias



Category: MOTHER: Cognitive Dissonance
Genre: Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Parenthood, Post-Canon, Severance ending, Team as Family, child Giegue, endgame spoilers, wow this whole thing is kind of spoilery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 19:18:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14063724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscamellias/pseuds/glasscamellias
Summary: After sort of saving the world, Nowheretrain starts picking up more performances, but a concert is no place for a small, easily overwhelmed psychic child.That's where Larice comes in.





	A Crayon Drawing of a Family

“I’m sorry, kiddo, but for the last time, you can’t come to the show with us. I know it sounds like a lot of fun, but I promise it won’t be, not for little fluffballs like you.”

Little Giegue was deep in a sulk, clinging onto Niiue and trying ineffectually to keep the group from readying their equipment. His telekinesis was strong enough that he could nudge speakers and instrument cases a few feet out of reach, but that was a tiny inconvenience at best. He was whining wordlessly and projecting into their minds, in a combination of palpable disappointment and a mental image of Niiue singing to him. If he had been old enough to speak verbally, he probably would have been doing that as well, at length and with significant volume.

“Googie, I _know_ it seems like you’re missing out on something like this, but a full concert really isn’t like bedtime lullabies or Alin playing for you when you’re bored. There’s gonna be too many people, and it’ll be too loud for these little ears of yours. And it’s probably going to go past your bedtime.” Niiue reached down to pet Giegue’s head, which didn’t mollify him in the slightest. “I promise you that it’s not good for little gieegs, and you can start going to concerts when you’re older and less sensitive.”

He flailed, his whines going up an octave as Niiue untangled his little hands from his pants and handed him over to Larice. By now, he had gotten enough practice at holding such a small, fragile creature that it didn’t worry him to think he might accidentally hold Giegue too firmly. He pressed his little face against Larice’s chest, and he could feel tears running down towards his legs.

“You good, Larice?” Niiue gathered up a box in his arms, while the speakers floated behind him. This wasn’t his first babysitting experience, but it was the first time Nowheretrain had sought out a performance off Saturn since getting their new groupie, so to speak. (And one of their few performances at all since to the loss of their drummer...Boson’s synthesizers couldn’t fill the hole Zarbol’s loss had left.) It would be several hours, and Giegue was already deeply upset. They needed to get him used to brief separations, but once Larice was actually holding a crying child in his arms, the prospect felt more daunting.

...From what Larice now knew of Niiue and Giegue’s shared childhood, maybe he was afraid the others would never come back. He would have to double his attempts at comfort to make sure Giegue didn’t become too distressed. He may have been a child now, far from the person they had fought mere months ago, but Larice didn’t want any psychic accidents.

It only took a few minutes to load the equipment onto the ship, now that Giegue wasn’t tampering with anything. The ship was ready to go, waiting to head off to Jupiter and a waiting stage, but both Niiue and Alinivar came back over. ‘One last hug’ was standard protocol for mere supply runs, so it was absolutely required now. He passed Giegue over to each of them in turn, and if the hugs lasted longer than the norm, none of them commented on it.

“Love you, Googie. We’ll be back before you know it.” And with one final caress of Giegue’s ears, Niiue followed Alinivar up the ladder and into the ship, heading off into space post-haste.

The sight of it was enough to bring Giegue to another round of tears, and he clearly needed a distraction. Gently rocking him, Larice headed back inside the base. Although they did spend time as nomads, exploring and offering their help to anyone they found, Saturn was still a nice place to settle. Niiue and Giegue had their own shared room now, littered with soft toys, picture books, and non-toxic art supplies. The walls were covered in Giegue’s drawings. Careful not to crush anything underfoot, Larice crossed the room to Niiue’s bed.

It was better to let himself cry things out before trying to ply him with a toy. It must have been uncomfortable to sit on a metal lap, so he wrapped Giegue up in one of Niiue’s blankets before setting him down. That seemed to be enough to slow down the tears--Niiue had taken Giegue along with him when they had bought bedding, and everything he bought had to pass the child’s exacting standards on softness and color, to the point that a blanket alone could cut off small tantrums. He still didn’t get the appeal of a bed over a hyberpod, but it had its uses.

In just a few minutes, his crying had settled into ragged breathing. “Has your mood improved?” In response, he was given the feeling of uncertainty. From his experience, that meant he was feeling slightly better but fragile enough that anything, even a stray thought, could tip him back into distress. “What would you like to play with, then?”

He squirmed around to free one of his hands from the blanket, pointing at a plush Fobby. (He had wondered if it was rude in some way to have a toy of a sentient species, but the Fobbies had cornered the market on plushes of themselves, so it was probably acceptable. And it seemed like a basic way to teach him to view Fobbies and Foppies as beings worthy of kind treatment, considering what his former army had done to them. Perhaps they needed to find someone who made plush toys so he could have a mook, a Starman, etc, as well.) Rather than making Giegue retrieve it himself and straining his PSI, he shuffled the gieeg over to one arm and leaned over to grab it.

Usually Giegue would use his toys to enact scenes that the rest of them could barely decipher. And as long as it didn’t seem to have violent implications, usually through knocking toys over or hitting them, it was fine to let him do as he pleased. But instead of hopping the Fobby around in some mysterious playacting, he wrapped his arms around, fixed his blanket, and settled down for what appeared to be a nap.

It was a little late in the afternoon for his usual nap, and it was possible that it would be a detriment to putting him to bed properly, but that much crying had clearly drained his energy. A tiny hand reached out of the blanket bundle to pat his leg, and a scene appeared in his mind, of Niiue singing absently while he washed dishes. It was clear that Giegue wanted a quiet melody to go to sleep to. Over the past few months, Niiue’s willingness to sing had increased exponentially, and Larice recorded almost all of it. Theoretically, it was to document any potential new lyrics that would otherwise be forgotten, but... For the most part, it was just to enjoy his friend’s voice and to have something to play for himself in private.

He could also put it on speakers, however, and he had collected plenty of Niiue’s lullabies to Giegue, perfect for naptime. As Larice barely pet the exposed tufts of his ears, he played through three audio files, each of them soft and loving, until Giegue was asleep.

-

The nap lasted longer than he had expected, and Nowheretrain must have been halfway through their set by now, even accounting for the opening band. Would there be an encore as well? He had been preparing food for Giegue to the best of his deeply limited ability when the tiny gieeg walked in, trailing his blanket and still holding onto the Fobby.

“Did you have an acceptable amount of rest?” As he leaned against Larice’s leg, he gave off lingering sadness but seemed mostly calm and alert. Perhaps melancholic? Most prominently among Giegue’s collection of picture books was everything they could find about identifying and coping with various emotions, and in reading them to Giegue, Larice was becoming more reliable at gauging his moods. Maybe their four-person parenting wasn’t perfect, but at least they could raise him not to utterly revile and distrust his own emotional range, as he had in his past life.

He scooped Giegue off the ground and held him high enough that he could see the kitchen counter. As someone who couldn’t eat organic food, he mostly relied on what people left in the fridge. Giegue pointed to what he wanted, and that would be his dinner. (Up to a point, anyway. There was a difference between letting him make his own choices and letting him gorge himself on nothing but peanut cheese bars. Even someone who knew as little about nutrition as Larice could understand that.) While he finished off an oil can, he made sure Giegue properly hydrated himself and ate enough to replenish himself.

He still seemed listless as he led Larice back to his room, but that seemed more emotional than physical, and he perked up once he began coloring.

At his insistence, Larice took his own sheet of paper, although the colored wax was sized for smaller hands than his, and he wasn’t the sort of person to doodle. He began to draw a pattern of interlocking diamonds while he kept an eye on Giegue’s page.

For the most part, his artwork was typical for a child, usually based on whatever he had seen that day. It was far more disconcerting when he wore out his supply of black and red in chaotic swirls that looked like screaming faces. It was hard to be sure if he registered any of it as memories, or if that was just the contents of the nightmares that left him screaming and reaching for the closest pair of arms. Luckily those nightmares seemed to be tapering off, but it was still unnerving to see depictions of their final battle with Giegue done in a child’s scribble.

But right now, it was something far more innocuous. It looked more like a purple blob than anything, but he was certain it was Elmadan. Elmadan had been a little wary of being around someone who had psychically manipulated him, but he was starting to warm up to Giegue in his current form. Giegue, on the other hand, seemed to like the purple mook a lot, trying to grab at his sunglasses or spiked shoulder pads (thankfully dulled enough that little hands wouldn’t be cut) whenever he had the chance.

“You’ve done very well at outlining his tentacles, I’m proud of you. Would you like to hang it up?” An emphatic shake of his head, which made his ears flop. “Or would you like to give it to Elmadan the next time we see him?” A rush of pride and excitement. “Alright, when we go out tomorrow morning, we can look for him. I’m sure he’ll think it’s lovely.”

Pleased with his accomplishment, Giegue covered two more pages with color, one of them appearing to be an abstract cloud in Magicant’s colors, and the other one a Saturn garden of gemblooms, with a lumpy Mr. Saturn seeming to act as gardener. After that, he seemed finished with drawing and proceeded to bounce his toys around the room with his telekinesis, insisting that Larice give him a more energetic soundtrack. He had plenty of recordings of band practices that would suit Giegue and his toys’ adventures, while making sure it wasn’t too loud for his sensitive ears.

Although that wore him out by bedtime, he still fussed at the prospect of sleep, having to be shepherded to the bathroom and into hygiene tasks. He was getting better at bathing himself without assistance, but Larice stuck around anyway, to remind him to wash the fur behind his ears. That and to make sure he didn’t become so distracted by his bath toys that he forgot bathing altogether.

By the time he was properly clean and wrapped in a towel, he looked too drowsy from the warm water to protest bedtime. The others must have been on their way back from Jupiter by now, but it would still be a wait, and Giegue needed his rest. Once he was dried off, his fur fluffed out to an absurd degree, Larice carried him to bed, dimming the lights on the way in.

He was getting better about sleeping by himself, but in situations like this, he would rest more easily in Niiue’s bed rather than his own, where the sheets held the older gieeg’s scent. His tiny head was dwarfed by the pillow, and Larice yet again was struck by just how small he was.

Maybe it was strange, tending to someone who had, in another life, nearly killed him multiple times over. Shouldn’t he have hated Giegue still? But instead, he was bringing him plush toys to sleep with, tucking him in, picking a final lullaby and playing it until his eyes drifted shut. Instead, he was practically Giegue’s parent.

He could only hope he was doing it justice.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in a few hours due to a stressful day.
> 
>  
> 
> EDIT: Is Nowhere Train actually a real band that exists in real life as well as the sort of canon band name of a bunch of aliens in a video game? I don't know how to feel about this. I guessed it's spelled without the space.


End file.
